Mafia: The Old Country Deluxe Edition

My first hour with Mafia: The Old Country felt like settling into a well-worn leather chair: comfortable, familiar, not quite as exciting as it looked from across the room. Hangar 13 has ditched the open-world bloat that dragged Mafia III into mediocrity and gone back to a tight linear structure, following Enzo Favara from sulfur mine slave to made man inside the fictional Torrisi crime family in 1900s Sicily. That is the right call. The campaign runs roughly 10 to 12 hours with over three hours of cutscenes woven into it, and the pacing rarely lets the story go cold. The writing is not without its clichés, but the cast earns genuine investment, and the Sicilian dialect voice option adds an authenticity that surprisingly few games of this scale bother with. On the mechanics side, the honest description is "seventh-generation action game in Unreal Engine 5 clothing." You get third-person cover shooting, rudimentary stealth using coin or bottle distractions to pull guards away before choking them out, and knife duels as the signature combat encounter. The knife fights are the game's most interesting mechanical idea: parrying, guard-breaking, and reading opponent feints give these face-offs genuine tension, especially early on. Repeat them fourteen times across the campaign, though, and the formula starts to feel less like tension and more like a script. Cover shooting with period weapons like lupara shotguns and stiletto blades is functional but stiff, and the shared aiming and camera sensitivity setting means ranged combat always feels slightly loose in a way you adjust to rather than fix. Stealth is the weakest pillar: the AI is too predictable, tossing one object reliably clears any two-enemy cluster, and the difficulty never meaningfully escalates. A passive charm upgrade system lets you invest in accuracy and combat bonuses, which adds minor build texture without being deep. Sicily itself is the game's most consistent strength. Built in Unreal Engine 5 with Nanite geometry and Lumen global illumination, the countryside, ruined temples, and dense hill towns look genuinely impressive in motion. Digital Foundry called out its visuals as among the best of 2025, and that tracks. The catch is that the world is mostly decorative: the open map exists behind a thin menu option labeled "exploration mode" that the game never explains, and the core campaign keeps you on a tight rail from objective to objective. A free post-launch Free Ride update added standalone challenge missions, races, an assassination mode, and a first-person driving option, which extends the value for players who want to linger in the setting after the credits roll. A story DLC called Man of Honor, which adds two new chapters and reintroduces a fan-favorite character, is also available now if you want more time with Enzo. The PC version carries a caveat worth knowing: reviewers flagged intermittent stuttering when transitioning in and out of cutscenes, particularly noticeable at higher speeds around the map. It is not a dealbreaker but it is a rough edge on an otherwise polished-looking release. The Deluxe Edition bundles the Man of Honor story DLC alongside the base game, which makes it the smarter entry point if you are already committed to the full experience. Bottom line: this is a game that does one thing exceptionally well (cinematic mob storytelling with strong characters and a beautiful period setting) and handles everything else adequately at best. Genre tourists who want mechanical depth will leave hungry. Narrative-first players who just want a quality mob drama with a clear beginning, middle, and end will find it satisfying.

Alex · Scout Team

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